Joseph Kostousov isn’t worried about AI chat bots. Instead, the second-year Economics Specialist is investigating the weaponization of autonomous artificial intelligence, and other catastrophic risks associated with loss-of-control. He founded the Toronto AI Safety Initiative (TAISI) to investigate the issue further at the start of the 2025-26 year.
“I learned about the AI safety problem a bit in my last year of high school, and I thought, this is pretty bad. This is coming a lot sooner than we think,” the St. Micheal’s College student explained. “The future could be a cool place if we get this right, but if we don’t, some AI experts, including Geoffrey Hinton, are predicting a 10 to 20% chance of human extinction within the next three decades. It just felt like an urgent issue, and it’s kind of neglected.”
To start the student society, Joseph worked with the Kairos Project, a nonprofit centred on accelerating the development of AI talent and policy. Through their Pathfinder Fellowship, the group provided TAISI with its start up funding and provided them with opportunities to coordinate with AI safety groups around the world. The initiative also has a Discord server with over 100 student participants.
“We are constantly exchanging field‑building ideas and tips and talking to more experienced organizers,” Joseph said. “It’s a really good base from which to figure out what works and what doesn’t, so we can iterate quickly.”
TAISI is currently preparing to run its introductory AI safety fellowships with one track focused on governance and another on alignment. Participants will meet once a week over dinner for eight weeks and discuss three to four papers on AI safety with the initiative’s facilitators.
“It’s meant to give undergraduates rapid exposure to the field so they can figure out their focus area,” Joseph said. “We’re hoping to start the fellowships the week of the 25th, so the application deadline is the 23rd.”
Students from across disciplines and fields of study are welcome to apply to join the fellowship discussions.
“This technology is poised to affect everyone in tremendous ways, in the very near future, so it would be a shame not to involve multiple disciplines,” he said. “We need as much insight as possible from students in different fields to think deeply about these issues. The fellowship is meant to help students realize that AI safety is a big issue, meet other people who care about it, and figure out where they can have an impact.”
Joseph’s own interest is in examining, emphasizing, and iterating on policy and practices that can and will help societies manage the threat of autonomous AI weapons systems.
“One way to work on AI safety is through governance. Increasing oversight of these AI models and working on international cooperation to prevent a race to the bottom, or a nefarious arms race,” he explained. “Another side is the technical work into researching how to build AI systems that are more transparent and easier to monitor and creating evaluations that can catch scheming AIs.”
The interest in AI governance and threat management is related to Joseph’s interests in the field of economics.
“Personally, I’m interested in working on multi‑agent risks, risks that arise when negative externalities compound from having lots of AIs interacting with each other,” he said. “One example is gradual disempowerment, where humans could lose control of the economy as it becomes run by AI agents. I think things like game theory could be applicable to this work, which I’m really excited to study in third year.”
With its emphasis on policy creation and rigorous testing of policy, Joseph thinks economic research models can tell everyone more about how to deal with the global coordination problems humanity faces.
“Right now, labs are building these systems because advanced AI holds the promise of extreme military superiority if they get there first,” he said. “The only way something like this can be mitigated is probably through national and international cooperation, which is very much an economics issue.”
Return to the Department of Economics website.
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